SUNDAY.
IT was very easy to make it a rule that Bertie should not leave his
nurseries without permission, except at stated hours; but it was a rule
that appeared impossible to enforce.
It was not that he was defiant, or passionate, or even, as it seemed,
wilfully disobedient; but nevertheless he was perpetually slipping away
at odd moments to the library window-seat, where he would remain quietly
perched up, gazing intently over the stretch of level country and
well-timbered park, and when discovered and reproved he would glance up
with troubled eyes into the grave face of his nurse, and say in
faltering tones that he did not mean to be naughty, but he liked being
there.
It seemed, indeed, as if some power more strong than that of mere liking
drew him to that spot. It almost appeared that an instinct which he
could not resist drove him to the place, and when Dr. Lighton heard of
it, he advised that he should be given way to in this matter.
“It is evidently some train of association that attracts him—some link
with the past that may in time prove of great value. I should let him
alone, Squire, unless he is in your way. He may find out what we want to
know, if he is allowed undisturbed leisure for thought in the spot of
his own choosing.”
“He does not disturb me,” answered the Squire. “He is the quietest child
in the world. He never talks, and he hardly moves. He is welcome to
stay, if you think it will be productive of any good results.”
“Well, I hope it may, that is all I can say. The case is an odd one, and
perplexes me, I own, but the experiment is worth trying.”
So the order was issued, and Mrs. Pritchard found her duties
considerably lightened, for Bertie troubled her with little of his
society, and was nearly always to be found perched silently upon the
library window-seat, sometimes with a book on his knees, but more often
merely resting his chin on his hand and gazing intently either at the
Squire in his leather-covered chair before the writing-table, or else
out of the window.
His daily walk was always the same—to visit David and the sandhills by
the sea, whilst his days were spent in quiet contentment in the old
library. It was an odd life for a little child to lead, as odd as the
whole strange chain of circumstances that had led him to this new home.
Things were in this state by the time Sunday came round; and the brief
interview with Queenie in the churchyard was the first incident that had
occurred to rouse the child out of the dreamy state in which he had been
sunk ever since his return to conscious life.
His eyes were brighter as he walked home beside the Squire, and he
looked about him with more of natural, childish interest than he had
ever evinced before.
When they stood together in the hall, the child looked up in the
Squire’s face with the first smile that had been seen as yet in those
wistful dark eyes.
“May I have my dinner down-stairs to-day with you?” he asked. “Because
it’s Sunday, you know.”
The Squire looked meditatively into the child’s face, and asked in his
turn,—
“Why should I be more troubled with you on a Sunday than on any other
day?”
Bertie smiled once more quite fearlessly. It had been observed from the
very first that the child had never appeared in the least afraid of the
Squire, whose rather rough manner and sharp way of speaking often made
him appear a formidable being to those who did not understand his truer
nature.
“I won’t be any trouble,” answered Bertie, in his frank and serious way,
“but I should like to come. Please will you let me?”
“Very well, I will allow it to-day, since your heart seems set upon it;
but you must not take it as a precedent.”
“Oh no, of course not,” answered Bertie; “it’s only on Sundays that I
want to stay with you for dinner.”
And then he mounted the stairs, to tell Mrs. Pritchard of the
arrangement he had just made.
The housekeeper was less surprised than she would have been four days
ago. She had observed how readily the child’s presence was tolerated in
the library, and she began to indulge the secret hope that the
companionship of the little boy might beguile the Squire out of his
long-established habits of sorrowful reserve and gloom.
She brushed his short, dark, curly head till it shone in the sunlight,
washed his face and hands, and tied afresh the little crimson bow that
contrasted well with the black of his velvet jacket. The new brightness
that had not yet left his face gave to it quite a new expression, and
there was in the child’s whole bearing a sort of courteous yet
commanding air that had not been observable before. He seemed suddenly
to take it for granted that he belonged to the house, and had a certain
right to a voice in its affairs.
He walked boldly down-stairs as soon as he was released from Mrs.
Pritchard’s hands, and made his way into the dining-room, where the
butler was laying the table.
The butler was no other than Mrs. Pritchard’s husband, and shared her
compassionate interest in the little waif who had been thrown upon their
hands. He smiled as the child approached, and said,—
“So you will take your dinner with the Squire to-day, Master Bertie?”
“Yes; and please don’t put me at the side of the table, Pritchard. I
should prefer to sit opposite to him here at the end.”
Pritchard was by no means certain how the Squire would like this
arrangement. It was seldom indeed in the years that had passed since her
death that his wife’s vacant place had been occupied by any one else;
but it is a weakness with elderly people, and especially with kind old
servants, to give way to the fancies of a child, and Pritchard did as
Bertie directed, and laid the two covers, one at the foot and the other
at the head of the long table that seemed meant for a merry family
party.
Bertie was standing gravely by his chair when the Squire came in and the
latter cast a keen glance upon the little figure outlined against the
sunny window behind.
“Shall I say grace?” asked the child, with the composure of manner that
showed this to have been an old habit in the forgotten life of past
days. He folded his hands and repeated a brief formula, and then he took
his seat at the table and arranged his napkin with an air of perfect
familiarity with the situation.
The Squire watched him with more interest than he had done before.
Certainly there was something rather attractive in this little nameless
boy who knew nothing about himself, yet betrayed his gentle birth and
breeding in each unconscious word and movement.
“Grandpapa,” said Bertie, looking across the table, “who is the pretty
little girl who sat opposite in church, and talked to me afterwards?”
“That is little Miss Arbuthnot. She lives in the big white house next to
ours.”
“Yes, I know; she told me so. She asked if I would play with her
sometimes. May I?”
The Squire smiled a little.
“Oh dear, yes! as far as I am concerned you may; I have not the least
objection for you to play with her. Whether she will be allowed to play
with you is quite another matter.”
Bertie made no response. He was not quite sure that he understood the
drift of this remark, and so he took refuge in silence.
After dinner he asked leave to go out alone. He wanted to go and see
David, but he did not wish to disturb Mrs. Pritchard.
“You see she will like to have a quiet nap on Sunday afternoon,” he
concluded, gravely, as if well acquainted with the habits of the elderly
housekeeper.
The Squire’s eyes twinkled a little.
“Who told you that, young man?”
Bertie looked a little perplexed.
“I don’t know,” he answered, slowly. “I seemed to know it.”
“Well, I don’t suppose you are far wrong. Yes, you may run along alone;
you’re too big a boy to have a nurse always dangling after you. Don’t
wander too far and lose yourself; but you may go and see David by
yourself whenever you like.”
“Oh, thank you!” answered Bertie, eagerly; and he ran off to fetch his
cap, much elated by this permission. Certainly he was beginning to awake
to life in a remarkable way.
It was a mild and sunny day out of doors. The air was still and sweet,
and the scent of spring was everywhere, as well as its signs and sounds.
Primroses and anemones made a starry carpet beneath the great oak and
beech trees of the level park. The buds were swelling visibly overhead,
and the sycamores and horse-chestnuts had already shaken out some little
tufts of delicate green. The birds sang overhead as they only sing in
the sweet spring-time, and Bertie’s eyes grew dazzled with trying to
follow the flight of the soaring larks, who rained down upon him the
liquid melody of their joyous songs.
Flat and bare as was the country round, the Squire’s park was well
timbered, and the trees were tall and old and grand.
His ancestors had laid out this place hundreds of years ago, had planted
trees when they built the house, and had cared for the one as much as
the other. The consequence was that the grounds of Arlingham Manor House
looked like an oasis of green woodland amid the flat monotony of the fen
country, and gave an air of picturesque well-being to the estate which
it could not otherwise have possessed.
Bertie looked round him as he walked down the wide carriage road with a
newly awakened interest in his surroundings. The painful confusion of
his mind had given place to something of natural and healthy curiosity
and pleasure. There was still a sorrowful consciousness of loss in the
child’s head and heart, a sense as if a black curtain had been suddenly
let down across his life and had shut him off from the light and warmth
he dimly knew to be behind; but he had begun to turn his thoughts away
from the blank vacancy behind, and to look out with a certain dawning
hopefulness into the new life that was opening out before him.
Bertie could not have put the sensation into words, but what was
happening to him was simply this. The faint recollections of a forgotten
past that had wearied and confused his brain during the first days of
his return to consciousness were fading away in the stronger light of an
actual, tangible present, and, save in certain places and under certain
conditions, the painful sense of bewildered perplexity was gradually
giving way to a more healthy frame of mind.
The park, with its voiceless language of coming spring, awoke no
associations within the child’s breast. He walked on quietly, enjoying
it all very much, but haunted by no illusive visions that refused to be
defined; troubled by nothing worse than a sort of anxiety lest Queenie,
the pretty little girl whose name Mrs. Pritchard had told him, should
not be able to keep the appointment she had made for the following
afternoon.
But he had soon left the park behind, and came out upon the low
sandhills that stretched away for at least a quarter of a mile towards
the margin of the sea. The sun shone very bright and warm here; the soft
sand crumbled beneath his feet; and the sea-gulls walked tamely about,
and looked at him with a sort of impudent assurance before they took
wing. Bertie was fond of this spot; he could not have said why, for
something in its level desolation always made him a little sad; yet the
sight of the boundless waste of heaving water and the arid stretches of
pale sand had an odd fascination for him, and he would have felt
sorrowful had a day passed without his visiting at least once the scene
that exercised a powerful sway over his imagination.
As he wandered down towards the margin of the sea, a little black figure
jumped up from a recumbent position upon the sand, and David and Bertie
stood face to face.
They looked very different indeed now, the two children who had once
been almost like little brothers for a few brief days of their life:
David, with his pale blue eyes, straw-colored hair, indeterminate face,
and coarse clothing, and Bertie, dark-eyed, dark-haired, clad in velvet,
and with that nameless air about him that bespoke birth and breeding as
no costliness of apparel could do. The boy’s face was aglow with
intelligence and eager welcome, and its expression was so utterly
different, in its refinement and sweetness, from the awkward, clumsy
pleasure painted upon that of the fisherman’s boy, that it was no great
wonder, perhaps, if David himself had some dim perception of it.
He stopped short and gazed at Bertie for a full minute in silence, and
then said, heaving a great sigh,—
“Eh, but thee is so beautiful! I do love thee!”
Bertie smiled and took both of David’s hands in his.
“I love you too,” he answered. “What are you doing, David?”
“I be learning my Sunday lesson. I goes to school mornings before
church; but I don’t go afternoons. I come out here and learns my lesson.
Does anybody give thee Sunday lessons to learn?”
Bertie’s hand went up for a moment to his head.
“Not here,” he answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “I should like to
learn yours with you, David.”
The fisher lad’s face brightened.
“Would’ee now? Eh, but that’s prime! I’ll learn un twice as fast with
thee.”
They sat down together upon the sand and laid their arms over each
other’s shoulders. David produced a card upon which the words of his
lesson were printed in large type:
“I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong
and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the
Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
Together the children read the words, and repeated them again and again
until they were quite familiar. David had almost mastered them before,
and Bertie had no trouble in impressing them upon his memory; but after
this was done, and David considered the matter at an end, his little
companion looked straight at him and asked,—
“What does it all mean, David?”
David stared hard for a few seconds at his questioner, and said,
slowly,—
“Teacher said as it was what God said to Joshua after Moses had gone and
died, you know.”
Bertie’s chin rested meditatively in his hand, his eyes were fixed upon
the shining sea.
“Did He say it only to Joshua?” he asked, with a certain wistfulness in
face and voice.
David’s brow drew itself into perplexed wrinkles.
“Teacher said as He says it to everybody; but I don’t understand about
that. Maybe you do.”
Bertie’s face brightened.
“That’s just what I wanted to know. You’re sure she said so?”
“Certain sure I be,” answered David, gravely. “She said as God loved us
all alike, and wouldn’t forsake none of us any more than Joshua. Only
we’ve got to trust Him, you know, like Joshua did.”
Bertie’s face was very thoughtful.
“It seems as if He’d forsaken me,” said the child, dreamily. “It seems
as if I’d forgotten everybody, and everybody had forgotten me.”
David looked perplexed and distressed for a moment, and then his
brightest smile shone over his face.
“I don’t believe God’s forgot thee after all,” he said. “I don’t believe
He ever would.”
Bertie’s face was very grave. He was not equally sure of this.
“I’ll tell thee what to do,” cried David, with a sudden flash of
inspiration. “Thee’d best tell God all about it, and ask Him to remember
thee again, if He’s forgot. I’m main sure He would then. He couldn’t
choose but love _thee_.”
“I wonder if He’d listen,” said Bertie, slowly.
“Teacher says He will,” answered David, with modest confidence. “She
says as He’ll hear the likes of us, so I know He’ll hear thee.”
Bertie looked down at the words upon the card, and repeated them aloud.
“I’ve got to be strong and of good courage,” he said. “Well, I’ll try.
I’d like to be that—boys ought to be brave and strong. I’ll ask God to
help me, and not to forget me much longer”—the child’s hand was pressed
to his head now, and he added, with a strange glance at his
companion,—“only we must always say, ‘Thy will be done,’ too.”
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